


Of Immobility & Movement

by rosequartzstars



Series: Of Interrupted Sleep [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aftermath of Possession, Angst, Bedroom, Bedrooms, Comforting Each Other, F/M, Hinny, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Literal Sleeping Together, Married Couple, Married Life, Night Terrors, Oneshot, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Sharing a Bed, Sleep Paralysis, Sleeping Together, Slice of Life, Trauma, hinny oneshot, married sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:55:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25274260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosequartzstars/pseuds/rosequartzstars
Summary: The experience of having Voldemort live inside your mind is a harrowing one— and, years after, it continues to haunt Ginny and Harry, disturbing their sleep. The wonderful thing about finally being together, however, is that they have one another for comfort when it gets to be too much to bear. (Hinny oneshot)
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley
Series: Of Interrupted Sleep [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1826047
Comments: 7
Kudos: 42





	Of Immobility & Movement

Ginny can't move.

She wakes up and she finds herself nailed to the bed, and though her eyes have flown wide open, blinking frantically as she tries to bring the room around her into focus, into consciousness, her body won't respond.

She knows this feeling. It's the same feeling of being trapped inside her own mind, of screaming and banging at its walls, knowing she's unable to do anything with her body. It's the same feeling of the diary taking over her, maneuvering her body like a marionette, leaving her to watch in horror as he puts it through the motions of committing atrocities an eleven-year-old should have never even witnessed. It's the same feeling of being out of control, of being imprisoned in consciousness, of being chained down and unable to do anything about it.

Sometimes, she has to force her eyes to close again, she has to put herself through the terrifying ordeal of watching every little memory flash by, as if her eyelids were a theatre screen. She has to do it, because she knows sleep is the only way out of it. When she wakes again, normally, not in rigid darkness like this one, she'll be able to move again.

But more often than not, Harry wakes up. He's a light sleeper, accustomed to it from years of living under a cupboard in constant alertness from when the next hiding might rain down on him. And he definitely notices when something's wrong with his wife.

And when something's wrong like this, when she's become a statue laying by him, he knows just what to do.

He knows where her mind is. He knows she's remembering everything about first year, everything about a time when her body wasn't her own, and when an evil presence lived in her mind. He knows all this, because she's told him, the morning after the next time it happened. He knows she's scared he's taken over again, even though he's long dead, and that he's pushed her to the back of her own consciousness. He knows she's scared of being nothing but a passenger in her own body, its pilot controls beyond her reach. He knows she's afraid that she's not herself.

So he turns her over gently, onto her side, so she's facing him. He holds her shoulder with one hand, to keep her steady, and caresses her cheek with the other hand. He doesn't even put his glasses on— he knows her well enough to find his way around her without a need for sight.

And he speaks softly, just the same as he does each night this happens and he's awake for it. He speaks softly. "Your name is Ginevra Weasley, Ginny Weasley. You're twenty-two years old. You're in your flat in East London. You're in bed with Harry Potter, your husband, and it's" —he always glances at the clock for this next part, making out the smudgy numbers even without a lens to look through— "it's two twenty-nine in the morning." He repeats it, soothingly, like a mantra, without letting go of her or ceasing to brush his finger to her cheek. "Your name is Ginevra Weasley, Ginny Weasley. You're twenty-two years old..."

And at last, the shock drains from her eyes, and their eyelids begin to drag down until her stare isn't quite as wide. She feels a tingle flow through her legs, slowly, up to her body, up to her face, up to her lips. And she can speak it, too. She can speak it with him, and as she brings a faltering hand up to his face, she does. "My name is Ginevra Weasley, Ginny Weasley. I'm twenty-two years old. I'm in my flat in East London. I'm in bed with Harry Potter, my husband, and it's..." She raises her head slightly from the pillow, to peer at the clock, and that's when Harry knows she'll be okay again. "It's two thirty-three in the morning."

She runs over it a few more times, like an actor trying to commit their lines to memory, until she's ready to venture back into sleep again. She stays facing Harry, but settles back into her pillow, and pulls the covers back over her. She reaches for Harry's hand, and holds it warmly. He knows not to hold her after these episodes, because if she wakes up in his arms and can't move, can't get out, she'll be terrified.

He knows. He understands. He squeezes her hand, once, lovingly.

They fall back asleep together.

* * *

Harry can't stop moving.

He has the opposite problem, really, and it would be humorous if it wasn't so scary.

He tosses and turns, he knots the sheets into tight tangles, he rocks the bed with the force of his movement, as if he were trying to break free. Sometimes he mumbles, too, old fragments from a past he can't forget, pleading for his life, pleading for _her_ life, pleading for anyone's life to an enemy long banished. And he swears his scar is prickling: it isn't, really, but it's a force of habit after all those nightmares starting when he was fifteen, and his hand flies up to his forehead and melds into where his scar is, the faded lightning scalding his fingers with nothing but the fire of memory.

It always wakes Ginny up. The thrashing, the muttering, the kicking— it always does, and she wakes quickly.

She doesn't reach for him or try to stop the moving: she knows if she does, it will only make it worse, and he'll only toss harder. So patiently, as if it didn't hurt her heart to the deepest fiber to see him suffering like this, she steadies herself and reaches for the lamp in her bedstand. She turns it on in one swift movement, with the agility of someone who is performing a duty, despite how hard it is for her to do so.

The light seems to bleed past Harry's eyelids, to seep slowly into whatever his mind is twisting forth to make him rock like this. Gradually, it brings him through. His eyes open with the tired of terror of someone who fears he's woken up from a bad dream into an even worse one, as was the case all those years, before his memory rouses to enough attention to remind him that all that is long past.

He stays flat on his back, panting, beads of sweat rolling down his forehead. He makes a grab for his glasses on the nightstand and perches them on his nose, clumsily, hurrying to lift the fog that surrounds him. He blinks behind the thick lenses: once, twice. Thrice. Just enough times to bring the world into clarity.

Ginny doesn't rush him. She doesn't step in, hand him his glasses, touch him in any way, try to hurry the process. She knows he'll turn to her when he's ready.

It takes him a few minutes, which he spends lying still on his back, his chest heaving with the effort of a nightmare, his breath gradually steadying until he no longer feels his heart pumping in his ears.

And only then, he turns to her. He knows she's been watching him, this whole time, but that she knows to keep her distance. To let him work through it, alone for the first few minutes. And once he's done that, once he's regained a measure of strength, once he's confident he's back in the world he helped secure, he goes to her.

He allows himself to break.

He lets himself dissolve into racking sobs that are more gasps for air than tears, clutching at her arms, bunching her nightgown in his fists, overcome simultaneously with the relief of reality and the sorrow of memory. He held it in for so long, all those nights his mind led him through terrifying passages and corridors, glimpsing into the Dark Lord's and trying to pretend it wasn't cracking him. But it's these episodes, these vestiges of a mind torn apart and sewn back together repeatedly, that allow him to admit it took a toll on him.

Nobody would blame him, he knows.

But he only trusts Ginny with it. She trusts him to rub his back gently, to pat his hair, to bounce her knees under him as if rocking him, to release small shushing noises into his ear as if keeping pace with a lullaby. She holds him until his white knuckles redden again, until his chest has stopped bouncing violently with the effort of his weeping, and until she's sure the terror has dispelled.

She pulls a pillow up behind her, then, when Harry's calmed down. She sits upright, resting her back against it. And she draws Harry closer, into her arms, into her embrace, and allows him to fall asleep with her chest for a pillow and her body for comfort, never ceasing the caresses over his body —gentle displays of affection an abused childhood long neglected him—, never letting him doubt that she's there, and she loves him.

He goes to sleep like a baby not long after, and she knows it's her arms that have done the trick. She smiles to herself, briefly, presses a kiss to his forehead, and reaches (careful not to rouse him) for the lamp to turn it off and get back in bed with her husband still in arms.


End file.
